Reviews

Lightweight, high quality tent with lots of room.

Lightweight, high quality tent with lots of room. The footprint is impossible to find at the moment so either make your own out of Tyvek, or temporarily use a footprint from a similar 2-man tent if you have one (I used my Marmot Limelight footprint - not ideal but it worked).

Pros

Lightweight

Easy setup

Good ventilation

Intuitive fly design

Small profile fits backpack better

Cons

Water can splash up under the fly if not completely guyed out

Hard to find footprint

Fly loses some of its star watching appeal if you have to guy out

The Kelty TraiLogic TN2 tent is a Backpacker Magazine Editor's Choice winner with some good reason. The tent fly rolls up on the head end and is secured at the top of the tent, and can also be closed by 2 people without ever leaving the tent.

This tent is a quick and easy setup for 1 person but if you're buying a new one, don't expect to find a footprint (not included). Neither the manufacturer nor any retailers have it available and I can't find anyone who can tell me when it would be. I consider this very poor planning on Kelty's part.

The ceiling and walls are completely mesh and the fly has 2 vents, so ventilation is great. We spent a week in Yellowstone and got rained on every day (and night). Daytime high temps were around 57°F and nights would drop into the upper 30's so with all the moisture and colder temps, there was bound to be some condensation. Even then, the condensation collected on the inside of the fly but ran down the sides instead of collecting and dripping on us in the middle of the night

The bathtub floor only rises up on the walls about 4 inches, and unless you completely guy out the bottom of the fly at both the head and foot, rain splashes up underneath it far enough to get through the mesh wall. And if you do have to guy it, don't expect to take advantage of the bedtime star watching opportunities without the effort of removing the guy lines, and don't expect to be able to put the fly down in the middle of the night without climbing out to reattach the guy lines. Once we guyed out the fly, we didn't get wet at all - no leaks through the floor, walls, corners, seams, fly.

I love how compact and light this tent is (around 4 lbs) and there's a fast pitch option (provided you can find the fly) that would lighten it even more. The whole tent fits in an 11x14" rectangular bag that easily fits into a backpack without taking up a whole lot of room. I also love the fact that the tent has 2 good sized vestibules, 2 doors (one larger than the other), and nearly vertical walls. All that mesh and the vertical walls makes the TN2 seem huge for a 2-person tent.

I wanted to be able to give this tent 5 stars because I really do love it. I've been a Kelty fan for a number of years and I think that overall they've done a great job with this product too. I can't give them a 4 or 5 rating because of the rain splashing under the fly, and because of the issue with not being able to get a footprint. If I'd been able to get the footprint, I'd have given it a 4.5 instead of a 3.5 rating but I'm a bit bent by what seems to be Kelty's serious lack of planning.

UPDATE: I just bumped my rating to 4 stars thanks to Kelty's great customer service. I called to find out why I can still find plenty of tents online but not a single merchant who has the footprint. I explained I'd signed up to get email notifications from the only 2 merchants who offered to alert me when they got the footprints in but hadn't received anything. I also voiced my dissatisfaction that this appeared to be very poor planning on Kelty's part. The CSR was very apologetic but told me they weren't expecting to get any in before December 10th. When I told him I'd looked everywhere and not a single merchant had them or could tell me when they expected them, he did his own quick online search and immediately found one at Amazon (yeah, they were one of the merchants who said I'd get an email notification - still nothing in my inbox). He suggested I hurry and order it since the cost was lower than if I waited until December to order one directly from them. I paid $26 USD plus $5.58 shipping whereas Kelty has the cost listed at $39.95. Thanks, Kelty - I remain one of your many loyal customers!

Utah, I was curious about the design of how the tent packs up and how it would work in one's pack. What's the thickness of the 11x14 bag? Have you just kept it up against the back of your pack? Great review and update!

This appears to be a well-constructed tent, and the stargazing fly is a genius idea. When I did a practice pitch in my yard and put my 77" Therm-a-Rest pad in the tent, though, it seemed like a tighter fit than it should be.

Sure enough, the tent floor on mine measured 81.5" x 48" at the widest, and that was being generous with how I was measuring, and I had the tent fully staked out. The narrow end was likewise a couple of inches narrower than stated. On top of that, mine arrived with a couple of small holes in the mesh of the large door.

I might have just exchanged it if it weren't for the smaller than advertised dimensions, because I really like the design. If you have a regular 72x20 pad and you aren't very tall, this tent might be great for you — however, though I'm only 5'11", I felt the tent's actual length wouldn't work for me.

Easy to use, not very heavy backpacking tent. It comes…

Easy to use, not very heavy backpacking tent. It comes with the star gazing rain fly which is great!

Pros

Star gazing rain fly

Lightweight

Works perfect with Trail Logic backpack

Square pack size

Cons

Was not as long as packaging indicated

Setup is super easy with this tent. Kelty has color coordinated poles, tent, and rain fly so that putting it together is really simple. The color coordination is not obscene or obvious so no one will know that it is there unless they are putting the tent up.

The tent has the ability to keep the rain fly rolled up and out of the way so that you can view the stars at night. If the weather turns you simply stick your arms out and roll it down to clip it. Very simple to use, and it was awesome to see the stars at night.

The size for width is great. My wife and I fit really well with space to spare. It has two vestibules for gear storage as well. The only downside is that the tent is not as long as advertised. I think it was supposed to be 6'11". I am 6'4" and my head and feet were touching the first one on both ends (they were sicking far out). Kelty, which has amazing customer service, sent us a new one which was better, but still not the advertised length.

We have used the tent in fair weather in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City. It seems like it will hold up just fine in bad weather.